The following description and examples are not admitted to be prior art by their mention in this Background section.
In order to enhance the yield and reliability of the semiconductor devices such as integrated circuits (ICs) and memory devices, examining the defects on the patterned wafer for the avoidance of them has been significant. The physical defects, such as foreign particles, scratch defects, residual defects, bridging defects and so on, cause the devices to fail electrically, for example, the short or open circuit. Furthermore, since deep sub-micrometer node devices are developed, new and more complicated manufacturing structures such as a dual damascene structure and a fin-shaped field effect transistor (FinFET) structure are utilized in the semiconductor devices. Therefore, new types of defects including latent defects, for instance, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) scores, under-layer leakage, under-etch, missing, voids, voltage contrast (VC) defects, and non-virtual defects (NVDs) occur during the manufacturing phase. Besides, while the less than 20 nm manufacturing process is on line, it has been a big challenge for the observation of nano-size semiconductor devices. It is consequence that the optical inspection apparatus has been stretched to the limit of its capability at the inspection of these defects and tiny devices. Herein, the issue is effectively addressed by a charged particle beam apparatus, for example, an electron beam tool based on a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the semiconductor manufacturing and the yield enhancement can be optimized by the apparatus.
In the fabrication of a semiconductor device using a charged particle beam inspection system, however, the contamination particles are inevitably formed and thus settle on wafers being processed therein. For examples, the inspected device in EBI usually remains residual particles arising from the components in a load lock system of e-beam inspection tool when the device is inspected for an electron beam imaging (EBI) for early defect identification. Referring to FIG. 1, a transitional bottom seal plate 100 for holding a sample, comprises a cable 101 lying in a groove 103 on the plate 100 for the signal transduction from a plurality of contact detecting units 102, which are used to detect the position of the sample, and a plurality of screws 104 to keep the plate 101 and the cable 101 from moving. These components can be the sources of the contamination particles.
Such contamination problem significantly lowers the product yield and the reliability of a semiconductor device and becomes more severe with increasing higher integration levels and with increasing a processing efficiency. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method and system capable of improving such the problem for the examination of charged particle beam system.
The present invention provides a load lock system with a patterning device holding apparatus for the charged particle beam imaging e-beam inspection tool to improve the aforementioned shortcomings of the conventional patterning device holding apparatus and reduce the possibility of damaging the semiconductor devices.